The invention relates to a process for the recovery of betaine from a molasses.
Such a process is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,957. In the known process, a feed solution of beet molasses is fed into a simulated moving bed chromatographic system. Water is used as eluent. The chromatographic separation leads to the formation of various fractions, a.o. a fraction with increased betaine content and a fraction with increased sucrose content. In Example 1 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,957, the fraction with increased betaine content has 70.9 wt. % betaine (on dry matter) and 11.1 wt. % sucrose (on dry matter); the fraction with increased sucrose content has 86.6 wt. % sucrose (on dry matter) and 3.3 wt. % betaine (on dry matter).
A disadvantage of the known process is that the separation of betaine from the other fractions in the molasses is not always optimal.